Some X850 clocking Qs

IamMed · 28 Feb 2006 at 21:08

I tried auto finding highest clock on the core of my XT and unlike all my other cards this cuts to a black screen where I have to reset PC when it reachs certain speeds.

Is this normal??

When I auto clocked using Overdrive it got 569.5mhz before black screen, using Atitool it reached 571mhz.

On all my old cards VPU recover would kick in or there would be artifacts detected in Atitool, where as this jus basically dies :confused:

dale1uk · 28 Feb 2006 at 21:34

Mine did this on the memory but not the core iirc. I get artifacts in ati tray tools with my core over 565 and dies when I push the memory over 620.
Max mine will run fully stable is 560/617 but run it at xt pe speeds 540/580 as that is good enough and cant really tell any difference other than in 3d mark.

smids · 28 Feb 2006 at 22:23

Sometimes there aren't any artifacts, but the Vgpu or vdimm just isn't enough and freezes. It is pretty normal. Some cards can handle not having enough juice and just artifact but others just crap out. Sounds like 565 is about the limit of that core.

IamMed · 1 Mar 2006 at 07:35

no way of altering voltages on these with software or bios update? or is hardware mod the only option?

welshtom · 1 Mar 2006 at 08:56

hardware only.

pretty easy though.

Tom

IamMed · 1 Mar 2006 at 09:45

not if your soldering is rubbish, like mine

Jimbo Mahoney · 1 Mar 2006 at 20:03

Wouldn't recommend the Vmem mod. I've killed a couple of cards with that.

Done a few Vcore mods though, and they've all been good.

Most of the power is in the core anyway.

IamMed · 1 Mar 2006 at 20:24

yer its jus a question of finding someone I trust to voltmod it for me lol, my solder iron is crap and I havent used one really since 96

Will have a look at card tommorow when I fit my zalman and see if I can spot all the points i need for the Volt mod.

welshtom · 1 Mar 2006 at 20:49

i'd do it for ya buddy

IamMed · 2 Mar 2006 at 10:19

meens im without pc for few days tho mate

I'll see if mate thinks he can do it, if not next time I go see my mum I'll fetch my card down to swansea

CurlyWhirly · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:06

I've ran the Overdrive utility and according to it the maximum core speed I can push it to is 594 Mhz but that's too high as when playing a game or running 3D Mark my PC freezes with a black screen so I now only push it to 580 Mhz and it runs stable at this speed.

Similarly according to Overdrive my memory will run at 614 Mhz (1228) but my PC just freezes as above so I have now found a stable overclock which is 600 Mhz (1200).

It beats me how the Overdrive utility can come up with speeds that aren't stable :confused:

IamMed · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:10

i used atitool to find my max mem which was jus over 600

running 561core/600mem now using the zalman, and hitting a max of 64c

tried again to find core maximum but again, system freezes up, so it seems with more volts it might do better

CurlyWhirly · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:05

IamMed said:
tried again to find core maximum but again, system freezes up, so it seems with more volts it might do better

I have never tried to increase the core voltage and I am wondering if it is safe to do so?

Using my motherboard utility EasyTune 4, I can increase the AGP voltage from 1.5V to 1.6V which would probably enable me to overclock the core a bit more but is it risky?

I think I read someone's comment that overclocking should be done in the BIOS as opposed to the Windows environment and if so why is this?

Also, I wouldn't know where to look in the BIOS anyway :confused:

smids · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:23

CurlyWhirly said:
I have never tried to increase the core voltage and I am wondering if it is safe to do so?

Using my motherboard utility EasyTune 4, I can increase the AGP voltage from 1.5v to 1.6V which would probably enable me to overclock the core a bit more but is it risky?

I think I read someone's comment that overclocking should be done in the BIOS as opposed to the Windows environment and if so why is this?

Also, I wouldn't know where to look in the BIOS anyway

DO NOT TOUCH AGP VOLTAGE - sorry, had to make sure everyone saw that. AGP voltage is the voltage of th AGP bus and should not be touched. It does not help clocking the card at all, the card has its own onboard voltage regulators and these are the ones that need adjusting - don't worry, pretty much everyone makes that mistake

. Increasing AGP voltage has been known to kill cards.

Video card voltage adjustments are done by using special BIOS / programs from within windows which access the videocard BIOS.

The reason all CPU clocks should be done via BIOS is that if you have an unstable system and you set the clock to run each time you startup windows, windows might fail to boot forever, forcing a reinstallation.

CurlyWhirly · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:33

Smids, thanks for the warning

I wouldn't have gone ahead with the voltage increase until I had feedback as to whether it is safe to do so!

I haven't long had the X850 and the last thing I would want to do is kill it

I think I will leave overclocking the core any further as it sounds risky besides I have overclocked my graphics card to rival a X850 XT PE so I am well pleased with it as it is.

smids · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:36

Honestly, overclocking a graphics card cannot damage it except for temperature. So long as the temperature is fine, then it is safe as you are not adjusting voltages at all (not without voltmods anyway). But I know what you mean. About the AGP voltage thing, the number of people that get that wrong is too numerous to count - luckily I was forewarned back in the day

.

CurlyWhirly · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:51

smids said:
So long as the temperature is fine, then it is safe as you are not adjusting voltages at all

In that case I would like to attempt it.

smids said:
Video cards are done by using special BIOS / programs from within windows which access the videocard BIOS.

Where would I get one of these special BIOS / programs from?
Any idea?

p.s. if overclocking the AGP bus is so risky then I can't understand why utilities like EasyTune 4 offer these features in the first place?

For example from default voltage of 1.5V, there are 3 overclocking settings 1.6V, 1.7V and 1.8V.

It seems a bit irresponsible allowing utilities to be able to increase the voltage of the AGP bus if it ends up killing your card.

smids · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:55

CurlyWhirly said:
In that case I would like to attempt it.

Where would I get one of these special BIOS / programs from?
Any idea?

p.s. if overclocking the AGP bus is so risky then I can't understand why utilities like EasyTune 4 offer these features in the first place?

For example from default voltage of 1.5V, there are 3 overclocking settings 1.6V, 1.7V and 1.8V.

It seems a bit irresponsible allowing utilities to be able to increase the voltage of the AGP bus if it ends up killing your card.

Another reason why people just don't use windows clocking utilities

.

About the video card clocking - you don't need to use the video card BIOS for that, the video card BIOS is only for voltage adjustments... all you need is ATi Tool for normal clocking

. The reason I mentioned videocard BIOS's was because we were talking about voltage adjustments. Even then, some BIOS's are locked and you need a hardware voltmod to adjust voltages - anyway enough rambling.

ATiTool is the most popular ATi clocker around. Don't worry if your comp locks up whilst clocking, just restart will a lower clock. Easiest way to use it is to click, find max memory and find max core. If it freezes, look at the point it got to and decrease it by 5mhz - this is max stable core. If memory starts artifacting, then decrease it by 5mhz after a restart from the highest clock achieved. That should get you going. As I said, if it freezes/locks up completely, don't worry, this is because some cards need more voltage and freeze when the clock attempted hasn't got enough juice.

CurlyWhirly · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:58

smids said:
About the video card clocking - you don't need to use the video card BIOS for that, the video card BIOS is only for voltage adjustments... all you need is ATi Tool for normal clocking .

I already have the ATI Tool so I will use that.
Thank you so much for your help Smids

p.s. I just realised that I may have hijacked this thread - sorry for that IamMed

However my queries are related to the posters original query as they are all related to overclocking a X850.

Big.Wayne · 3 Mar 2006 at 02:24

IamMed said:
I tried auto finding highest clock on the core of my XT and unlike all my other cards this cuts to a black screen where I have to reset PC when it reachs certain speeds.

Is this normal??

The same thing happened to me tonight. I was just doing the first bit of testing on a PCI-Express X850XT

2006-03-03 00:01:01 Clocks set to: 550.80 / 540.00
2006-03-03 00:01:04 Clocks set to: 551.25 / 540.00
2006-03-03 00:01:56 Clocks set to: 551.57 / 540.00
2006-03-03 00:01:59 Clocks set to: 552.00 / 540.00
2006-03-03 00:02:02 Clocks set to: 552.27 / 540.00
2006-03-03 00:02:04 Artifacts detected after 05:30.25. 531 pixels don't match.

Some time after the screen went black and I had to reboot, only trouble was it wouldn't reboot? I left it for 5 mins and tried again and no problem. I think my retail cooler is no good or more likely it is not fitted correctly as I saw the GPU temps hovering just below 90°C!! :eek: